The ancient Egyptians and the Hebrews did not cultivate oats, but they are now grown in Egypt.[1877] There is no Sanskrit name, nor any in modern Indian languages. They are only now and then planted by the English in India for their horses.[1878] The earliest mention of oats in China is in an historical work on the period 618 to 907 A.D.; it refers to the variety known to botanists as Avena sativa nuda.[1879] The ancient Greeks knew the genus very well; they called it bromos,[1880] as the Latins called it avena; but these names were commonly applied to species which are not cultivated, and which are weeds mixed with cereals. There is no proof that they cultivated the common oats. Pliny’s remark[1881] that the Germans lived on oatmeal, implies that the species was not cultivated by the Romans.
The cultivation of oats was, therefore, practised anciently to the north of Italy and of Greece. It was diffused later and partially in the south of the Roman empire. It is possible that it was more ancient in Asia Minor, for Galen[1882] says that oats were abundant in Mysia, above Pergamus; that they were given to horses, and that men used them for food in years of scarcity. A colony of Gauls had formerly penetrated into Asia Minor. Oats have been found among the remains of the Swiss lake-dwellings of the age of bronze,[1883] and in Germany, near Wittenburg, in several tombs of the first centuries of the Christian era, or a little earlier.[1884] Hitherto none have been found in the lake-dwellings of the north of Italy, which confirms the belief that oats were not cultivated in Italy in the time of the Roman republic.
The vernacular names also prove an ancient existence north and west of the Alps, and on the borders of Europe towards Tartary and the Caucasus. The most widely diffused of these names is indicated by the Latin avena, Ancient Slav ovisu, ovesu, ovsa, Russian ovesu, Lithuanian awiza, Lettonian ausas, Ostias abis.[1885] The English word oats comes, according to A. Pictet, from the Anglo-Saxon ata or ate. The Basque name, olba or oloa,[1886] argues a very ancient Iberian cultivation.
The Keltic names are quite different:[1887] Irish coirce, cuirce, corca, Armorican kerch. Tartar sulu, Georgian kari, Hungarian zab, Croat zob, Esthonian kaer, and others are mentioned by Nemnich[1888] as applying to the generic name oats, but it is not likely that names so varied do not belong to a cultivated species. It is strange that there should be an independent Berber name zekkoum,[1889] as there is nothing to show that the species was anciently cultivated in Africa.
All these facts show how erroneous is the opinion which reigned in the last century,[1890] that oats were brought originally from the island of Juan Fernandez, a belief which came apparently from an assertion of the navigator Anson.[1891] It is evidently not in the Austral hemisphere that we must seek for the home of the species, but in those countries of the northern hemisphere where it was anciently cultivated.
Oats sow themselves on rubbish-heaps, by the wayside, and near cultivated ground more easily than other cereals, and sometimes persist in such a way as to appear wild. This has been observed in widely separate places, as Algeria and Japan, Paris and the north of China.[1892] Instances of this nature render us sceptical as to the wild nature of the oats which Bové said he found in the desert of Sinai. It has also been said[1893] that the traveller Olivier saw oats wild in Persia, but he does not mention the fact in his work. Besides, several annual species nearly resembling oats may deceive the traveller. I cannot discover either in books or herbaria the existence of really wild oats either in Europe or Asia, and Bentham has assured me that there are no such specimens in the herbarium at Kew; but certainly the half-wild or naturalized condition is more frequent in the Austrian states from Dalmatia to Transylvania[1894] than elsewhere. This is an indication of origin which may be added to the historical and philological arguments in favour of eastern temperate Europe.
Avena strigosa, Schreber, appears to be a variety of the common oats, judging from the experiments in cultivation mentioned by Bentham, who adds, it is true, that these need confirmation.[1895] There is a good drawing of the variety in Host, Icones Graminum Austriacorum, ii. pl. 56, which may be compared with A. sativa, pl. 59. For the rest, Avena strigosa has not been found wild. It exists in Europe in deserted fields, which confirms the hypothesis that it is a form derived by cultivation.
Avena orientalis, Schreber, of which the spikelets lean all to one side, has also been grown in Europe from the end of the eighteenth century. It is not known in a wild state. Often mixed with common oats, it is not to be distinguished from them at a glance. The names it bears in Germany, Turkish or Hungarian oats, points to a modern introduction from the East. Host gives a good drawing of it (Gram. Austr., i. pl. 44).
As all the varieties of oats are cultivated, and none have been discovered in a truly wild state, it is very probable that they are all derived from a single prehistoric form, a native of eastern temperate Europe and of Tartary.
Common Millet—Panicum miliaceum, Linnæus.